LPs make a big comeback
The Hindu
Tracking the vinyl boom
It’s 4 on a Sunday evening, and 73-year-old A.K. Sreeramulu of Rhythm House in Purasawalkam, Chennai, sounds happy. He’s just back from Anna Nagar — with him are a turntable, a set of speakers and 80 LP records, worth ₹ 22,000. Someone he knows alerted him about a family that was looking to give away its vinyl collection. And, he set off on his usual 4 p.m. outing for vinyls. Those LPs joined the thousands of Indian and Western classical and film music vinyls already stacked in Sreeramulu’s store, a much-venerated haunt for vinyl lovers from across the country, and abroad too.
In Mumbai, 64-year-old Pilak Bhatt of Music Circle, Kandivali East, has been a favourite of collectors for over 15 years. A former accountant, he decided to do what he loved once he turned 50. The turntable and vinyls were a familiar world for Pilak, who grew up with parents who loved music. “Analog sound is much more natural, it is warmer and uncompressed. When you listen to music on vinyl, you hear it the way it was recorded. Also, the ritual of holding the record, cleaning it, and placing the needle — there’s a certain pride of possession,” he says.
I cannot agree more since my 20-year-old son takes care of his vinyls the way I once took care of him.
This is something 56-year-old businessman Manish Rathore, who lives in Lucknow, concurs with too. Among his passions are music and films, and Manish has about 500 records, some handed down and some collected. “It helps that Lucknow is a city with history. You can find some gems in old stores,” says Manish. Among his collections are dialogues and music of Hindi films from the 1960s and 1970s. He also collects cassettes.
“I go for the nostalgia and sound quality. The art work is a major temptation too. Also, with LPs, you get the full list of credits for old songs, which helps you appreciate all those who created it,” says Manish, who has Pakeezah, Alam Ara, and the dialogues of Mughal-e-Azam, Kalicharan and Kala Pathar among others.
After a break of close to two decades, when there were enormous number of sellers but no buyers, vinyl is back in demand. The best part is many young buyers are scouring physical and online stores after reading up on bands and singers, and are curating their collection.
Vinyl is now an expensive hobby. Which is why when someone gifts away a collection, people grab it. And that is how we now have an LP pressed in 1965 on ‘The Early Phases of Diabetes Mellitus’, produced by Excerpta Medica Foundation under a grant from Pfizer Laboratories. And, there’s a line about the jacket design too: “The artist has depicted a normal and a diabetic GTT curve enclosing the gray area of prediabetes.”